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Obama full statement on Shinseki resignation

Boehner reacts to Shinseki resignation: 'Changes nothing'

With Eric Shinseki out at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the focus now shifts to Capitol Hill, placing the two-term Vermont independent and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman at the center of the growing VA health care controversy. Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, is assembling a legislative package to help address the issue in the hopes that he can consolidate support within the veterans community and assuage concerns of vulnerable Democrats.

In the process, he’ll have to win over enough Republicans to push the bill through the narrowly divided Senate — or maneuver deftly so it appears that Democrats aren’t blamed for its failure.

It’s a tall task for anyone in a gridlocked Congress — let alone a fiery partisan in the middle of an intense election year. And he’s already engaged in a fierce back-and-forth with Republicans on the issue, after the GOP rejected his $21 billion vets bill earlier this year and he blocked a House plan aimed at holding senior VA officials more accountable.

In an interview Friday, the 72-year-old Sanders signaled his VA bill would move in the direction sought by Democrats: Expand access to health care within the VA system even as the GOP pushes to instead let veterans see private doctors.

The bill Sanders is developing would allow veterans waiting for care to access other federally licensed health centers or seek private care funded by the VA. The bill also proposes paying down student debt for nurses and doctors in order to bring medical professionals to the sprawling veterans health care system. And Sanders said that he will also aim to loosen strict deadlines for providing care within two weeks to vets, arguing that such onerous requirements contributed to the falsification of wait times.

To help head off GOP criticism after blocking the House bill aimed at making it easier to fire or demote senior-level VA officials, Sanders said he wants to strike a compromise with Republicans to hold bad actors accountable.

“I have concerns with what passed in the House because I worry about potential litigation and I worry about the politicization of the VA,” Sanders said as he crisscrossed Vermont, speaking with veterans along the way. “It’s a bad idea. I want to work on a compromise.”

Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Veterans Affairs’ Committee, said Friday he was “very disappointed” in Sanders’ position, given that the House passed the accountability bill by a resounding 390-33 vote in May.

“We have to get accountability into the system, and it has to be real accountability,” Miller said. “Just like a member of Congress can fire their staff, so should the secretary have the ability to fire his senior level staff for not doing their job, especially for lying to them.”

Still, after President Barack Obama accepted Shinseki’s resignation Friday, Democrats hope the narrative over the scandal will shift away from the battle over whether there should be a new head of the VA — and instead focus mainly on which party has the best ideas for providing care to veterans. And Democrats believe they got a political boost when Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the ranking member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, engaged in a bitter tit-for-tat last week with some of the nation’s largest veterans groups over what he argued was their interest in “defending the status quo within” the VA.

But Democrats know they are not out of the woods yet, with growing GOP calls for more heads to roll.

“First, we have to come up with accountability: Who did what wrong, who should lead the veterans administration, where is the accountability?” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “Second, we can’t leave it at that; we have to get it well. Are veterans getting adequate health care?”